Ami was insanely nervous after how Naru's failed dinner went with her parents. Sure, it seemed like it was working out now, but it had been really upsetting for Naru at first. Ami knew because she had sat with her while she wept over it all.

Zoisite squeezed her hand to get her attention. "You're mom isn't part of an all-male cult determined to kill any and every supernatural being."

Ami gave him a small smile. "True, but surely in these modern times, there's a woman's version of that."

"Does she have any strange rings?" he asked conspiratorially, laughing as he did.

"She doesn't wear any jewelry. And surely women wouldn't be so tacky."

He pulled her into his arms. "And no matter what, you have me and the whole group. Naru had a lot of support when her father flipped out."

"True. But that's the thing in the end. Naru was close to her father from the beginning. My mother and I…" She paused and thought about what she wanted to say. "My mother is an amazing, highly capable, devoted doctor. She's saved countless lives. One day we ran into a family in the street that told me how she had saved the mother's life five years prior. I met all three of their children. They were aged ten, six, and three. Not only did she save a life, but I also met a whole person who would never have been born! It was incredible."

He knew exactly where this was headed, so he finished the story for her. "And to do all that, she had to be at the hospital –not at home."

She nodded sadly. "I really wasn't ever mad about it. She was saving lives. But…"

He pulled her into his arms and held her. "But you were alone a lot, and as a result, you aren't close with your mother."

"Yeah. And in the end, it was why becoming a vampire interested me so much. I wasn't super attached to the life I had, and everything I was good at would only be enhanced with a longer life span. Think of how much I can learn over centuries."

He kissed her temple. "And now?"

"And now it appeals to me for a different reason. Rei said that you four could be made into hybrids too. I want to live centuries upon centuries with you."

Zoisite chuckled, "I think Rei is afraid to tell us there is pain involved, and that's why she hasn't made us hybrids yet."

"There might be pain, but that's not the reason. She knows you would all want to do that at the same time, and she's not ready for Jadeite to make the transition. She needs to get pregnant first."

He looked at her in shock. "They want to have a child?!"

"Yeah. Soon. Once they marry." She saw him start to object, and she placed a finger over his mouth. "She knows she's marked. She just wants a wedding and then the child. Jadeite is on board with it all."

Zoisite cocked his head, "Do you want a wedding?" He really thought about it, and parts of it appealed to him.

"No. I want to update the family registry and make it legal between us. The mated mark really does mean a lot to me. I have just lived as a human for most of my existence, and human things still matter to me."

"If you think I'm offended, you're wrong. I want to mark you in every way possible. Your mated mark, a wedding band, pigtails, I want it all."

"What? Pigtails?! What are you even talking about?"

He gave her a sexy smirk and said, "The Toposa women of South Sudan wear their hair in small pigtails to signify marriage. Anything that you want to do to indicate that your mine is more than okay with me, Ami."

She gave him a kiss on the cheek. "You're so cute."

"Damn, right I am."

Ami's mood shifted, and she turned to face the door she had been stalling at. It was the door to her mother's penthouse, and it felt intimidating for the first time in her life. She still forced herself to knock.

Saeko opened the door and smiled at the couple. "Come on in. Dinner is ready."

Ami's stomach dropped. She had forgotten she would have to be invited into the home she'd grown up in since the age of three. Everything had worked out, but it felt upsetting to know she hadn't been able to return until just now.

She felt Zoisite's warm hand on her back, and it calmed her, and she stepped into the condo. She was then able to do the introduction. "Mom, this is Zoisite, my fiance."

Saeko looked pointedly at Ami's hand. "Really? He forgot something."

Ami balled her fists but managed to calmly say, "I don't need a ring, Mom."

"I just meant I couldn't tell by looking at you. That's all."

Zoisite was really wishing he had thought of getting her a ring. Of course, he didn't expect to be introduced as her fiance. But he admitted that oversight was his fault. What else could she introduce him as? If she had said boyfriend, he would have been offended, and Mate would have probably disturbed her mother.

Ami pressed, "You taught me to value other things more than jewelry."

"Like what?" Her mother asked, intrigued.

"Loyalty. Unlike my father, he's not a philandering asshole."

Saeko laughed at that statement. "Fair point. He got me a huge ring too. However, I did get the satisfaction of pawning it when I tossed him out on his cheating ass."

They all sat for dinner and began eating. The conversation had stalled, and Ami didn't know how to get everything back on track.

It was Zoisite that said, "Dinner is delicious."

"I'm glad. I tried a new take-out place down the street that just opened."

Ami noticed his confusion, so she stepped in. "Mom never learned to cook. We just always got take out and put it on plates and ate pretending like we had a personal chef."

"Brilliant! Gosh, the guys and I absolutely suck at cooking. It wasn't until Makoto moved in that we started eating well."

"Makoto?" Saeko asked.

Zoisite said, "She's Nephrite's finance. He has a massive house, and we all live there. When they got together, she moved in and started cooking. She's actually a chef, so it's a bit like having a personal chef all the time." He then took a huge bite of food so that he couldn't talk for a while. He felt like he was rambling.

Saeko nodded and placed her chopsticks down on her plate. "Ami, are you going to tell me what's going on?"

"What are you talking about, Mom?"

She leveled a serious look at her daughter. "I'm not stupid. I've watched you ever since you've gotten here, Ami. Did you forget I'm a doctor?"

Ami placed both her hands on her lap and squeezed her them together. "What do you mean?" She asked with fake innocence.

"You're not breathing. Not only that, you're paler but still look healthy, and your posture is perfect."

"My posture. You've always wanted that, and now you're calling me out on it?"

"Really, Ami, you're bad at deflecting. I accused you of not breathing too, and you fixated on your posture."

"I don't know what to say!" Ami countered.

Saeko leveled a calm look at her. "The truth, Ami, like always. When have I gotten mad at you over the truth?" And she was being honest. Her practical and extremely level-headed mother always took the truth calmly. That was probably made much easier by the fact that Ami's truths never involved her doing something wrong. She was a very obedient child.

"Do you know about vampires?" Ami blurted out.

"In the zeitgeist or in reality."

"Reality."

Her mother shook her head. "Honestly, no. Is that what you are? I didn't imagine they actually existed."

Ami swallowed hard. "Well, we do. And…." She paused and then cocked her head. "Wait, what about the battle in the shopping district the other day?!"

"I didn't catch the footage, and everyone's account seemed fantastical and made up. I didn't think it had any merit."

"Well. I'm telling the truth."

"Of course you are," her mother said dismissively. "I can see something is very unique about you with my own eyes."

"Are you… Upset?"

"Why on Earth would I be?"

"I'm a vampire, mom. That freaks out some people."

Saeko shrugged. "I'm not like other mothers for good and bad. I wasn't there a lot when you were growing up, but I'm also not going to get upset over this. You're a smart woman, and I'm sure you knew what you were doing when you chose to become a vampire."

Ami tried not to think about how she was drunk on lab-created alcohol when she made the decision. Instead, she glossed over that part. "Do you have any questions?"

Laughing, Saeko said, "Tons! You should know me better than that."

"Well?"

"Do you drink blood?"

Ami nodded. "We need blood to survive, but I have these." She pulled out an ornate pill case and plucked out one pill. She then dropped it in her glass of water, and it changed to blood. "I can drink this, and it will sustain me like blood would."

Her mother picked up the glass and smelled the contents. "Amazing. That smells exactly like blood."

"It tastes like it too. It can't work to repair any damage to my body, but like I said, it can sustain me."

Saeko dipped her pointer finger into the drink and then licked a bit off. "Remarkable. To think vampires have this technology. I wonder what blood type it is and if it can be adapted to work for transfusions for humans."

"No, it won't work for humans for the same reason it doesn't fully repair vampires. The white blood cell count is low. You could supplement with white blood cells, but that is cost prohibitive. People get paid a lot of money to donate those. In the end, blood donations are more cost-effective in medicine. And to answer your question about blood type. It's AB."

"That really is fascinating. Can I take this and do some testing on it to see if I can reverse engineer it?"

Ami pulled out her phone and accessed the file on her cloud drive. "Here, I'm emailing you the research and all my data on the blood tablets. You don't need to do that."

Saeko knit her brow. "I guess I'm confused. How did you get that information? Surely it's a closely guarded and very lucrative secret."

Zoisite started laughing. It only just dawned on him that Ami's mother would have no reason to know that Ami made the tablets. He said, "Your amazing daughter is the inventor of the biggest breakthrough in Vampire history. Even Dracula himself has spoken with her and told her how amazing she is. He buys tablets from her too."

Saeko's jaw dropped, and she blinked in surprise. She was having trouble processing two huge bits of surprise information. "You invented the tablets?" She paused and cocked her head. "And Dracula is real?"

"Yes to both. I didn't want to have to bite humans all the time. Really, being a Vampire is harder on introverts. Humans don't have to talk to their meal. I wanted a way to survive without having to go 'hunting' for food. While a human can lose a pint of blood, we take less since we don't want to have to give them cookies and juice before we go on our way. It means a lot of snacking from different people."

"I mean, I knew you were brilliant. But this is amazing, Ami. You invented a way for vampires to survive on lab-created blood. And that protects our blood donations too."

Ami shook her head. "Unlike TV, we don't steal blood bags to survive. The anticoagulants in the blood donations make them impossible to consume."

Saeko smiled. "This is all so interesting. Tell me about Dracula. You've actually talked to him?!"

"He's nothing like the Dracula from the book. At least the author was honest and posted it as fiction, against Van Helsing's wishes, I'm sure."

"Van Helsing is real too?"

"He's not the immortal angel he made himself out to be. In fact, the whole book is based on his fabricated side of the story. He didn't even manage to kill Lucy. She's very much alive and happily married to Dracula. They have a sweet little girl Sophia they adopted too. She loves being a mother, and she said Sophie has her dad wrapped around her little finger."

Ami's mother was actually vibrating with excitement. She one hundred percent believed everything Ami said, and she loved learning unique and interesting things. Another parent might have questioned such a crazy story, but one, she knew Ami wasn't breathing, and her coloring was all off, and two, she would have a harder time believing that Ami would lie to her than the idea that vampires were real.

Saeko asked, "So you have to be a big deal among the vampires. After all, you freed them from having to drink from humans."

Zoisite said, "I've tried to get her to see that, but I'm sure you know how humble your daughter is."

"I'm around a living legend all the time," she said, in exasperation to Zoisite.

"Dracula is here?" Her mother asked.

"No, Usagi. You wouldn't have heard of her. She's only famous among the supernatural. But among us, she's even bigger than Dracula."

Zoisite added, "And she thinks you're amazing and smart, and you're one of her closest friends." He knew she wouldn't fully explain her connection to Usagi, so he did it for her. "You're an integral part of her group, and she lives off of your blood tablets now." He mentally added, when she isn't going on a killing streak.

"Amazing. I'm not surprised, though, that you're among the top in your field. I always knew you were destined for greatness. I didn't expect it to be amongst the supernatural, as you put it, but I'm not in the least bit shocked."

Ami was worried she would want to cry during dinner, not that she could cry anymore. But she didn't expect the tears she would want to shed would be happy tears. Her mother was saying everything she had dreamed of her saying once she got a carrier. Something she didn't expect while she was still in college. It was overwhelming in the best way possible.

Saeko focused her eyes on Zoisite. "You're human. Is it normal for humans to date vampires? I mean, it seems like a lot of trust on your part."

"You like me," he stated. Suddenly absolutely sure of that fact.

"I do," she replied. "You seem to understand my daughter and not be scared off that she's different, and, I assume, more powerful than you. Do you plan to become a vampire too?"

"I'm curious," he started. "I know you don't know me as well as your daughter, and you're right, I'm not a vampire, but is anything off about me to your eyes?"

She smiled, "Ooh, a test. I like this!" Saeko looked at him intently, studying him. "Dang, if I'm supposed to notice something, I'm missing it." She visibly deflated.

He shook his head. "I was really just curious, is all. I don't think there is anything to see since I'm still living. I'm a werewolf, though. Probably anything different about me would be muscular and skeletal. I need air and food like you do to survive."

"Fascinating. Do you change form on the full moon? Sorry if I sound ignorant. I just want to learn."

He gave her a kind smile. "Right now, Ami is thrilled you're taking this so well. Ask me anything. You're beyond what we dared to hope for. No, I don't turn on the full moon. I can become a wolf at any time I want. During the full moon, the pull to transform is stronger, but not a requirement."

Saeko sat perfectly still. "Um…" she hesitated. "Would you be willing to become a wolf now? I'm so curious."

He looked puzzled. "Yes, but why didn't you ask your daughter to show you her vampire form."

"Because I'm her mother, and I know her. She doesn't want me to see her transform. Aren't I right, Ami?"

"Yes, mom."

"What am I missing?" Zoisite asked, looking at Ami in shock.

It was Saeko who answered, "I love my daughter deeply, and she knows that. But we both made sacrifices for my career. And I've been so damn impressed with how understanding she's been through the years." She then sighed sadly. "Her way of feeling close to me ever since she was little was to try to be just like me. She's brilliant and could do anything she put her mind to, but she chose to become a doctor. That's not a coincidence. She doesn't want to show me physically how different we are. It would upset her, and I respect her feelings and her needs too much to ask that of her."

Zoisite worked to take in everything Ami's mother had said. It was a lot. Including the admission that she knew she chose her job over her daughter but still loved and admired her deeply.

He nodded. "I don't mind showing you what I look like as a wolf."

Zoisite then transformed, astounding Saeko. He was massive, with sleek auburn fur and bright shiny eyes. She was sure he was well over a hundred pounds.

Once he was back to himself, he said, "It's why we don't transform much, especially in the city. We can't be mistaken for the family dog."

"No. No, you can't," Saeko agreed, shocked and smiling. "Your wolf form is quite impressive, though. Thank you." She then said, "How long do werewolves and vampires live? Will you be able to be there for my daughter, or will you leave her crying at some point?"

"Vampires don't die unless they're killed. Werewolves live slightly longer than they would as a human, but not so long anyone would notice. I'm assured I'll make it into my nineties. That said, there are also witches, and I say that to explain that we know a very powerful one that can make sure I don't die by becoming a hybrid. I'll be both vampire and werewolf, and I will have the same lifespan."

"There are witches and hybrids too! Wow."

"Witches, yes," Ami said. "There is only one hybrid right now, and he's with Usagi."

"But if witches can make them, why…." Saeko trailed off, watching Zoisite shake his head.

"Our friend, Rei, is a very powerful witch. She's the only one in the history of the planet to keep a vampire/werewolf from dying."

"Dying?"

"It's a combination that can't be sustained normally," Ami replied. "Mamoru, Usagi's bonded love, would have died without Rei's help. Usagi turned him into a vampire, not knowing the power of her blood would awaken the very dormant werewolf blood in him. He's the first one in history."

"And this Rei will make you a hybrid too?"

"She will." Zoisite left it at that. Saeko had already digested a large amount of information tonight. She was an actual genius, but he figured it was all a lot to process nonetheless. He wanted her to get a base knowledge going for her before he started adding on. Plus, if he explained everything, they would be there all night.

"You're not telling me everything," she said confidently, reading his facial expression perfectly.

"True," he admitted. "There is a lot to tell, though, to be fair, and not all the details matter for what we're talking about right now. For example, Usagi is older than Dracula, interesting yes, but not relevant to our conversation."

Saeko nodded in agreement. "You're right. I just love to learn, and it's all fascinating to me. And you're probably waiting for it to fully dawn on me that my daughter's a vampire."

"I am," he replied.

"It hasn't hit yet, but when it does, I'm sure it will help to know she won't be alone. Thank you for that." She shook her head. "This is all just so fascinating."